Where your Office 365 customer data is stored

03/09/2020

117 minutes to read

In this article

The tables below shows where customer data is stored at-rest for Office 365 services across all of Microsoft's global cloud locations. Expand the location of your billing address country to find out where customer data for each service would be stored.

Due to the unprecedented circumstances around the COVID-19 crisis and the need to manage online services demand in Europe, if your organization is an educational institution, we may provision your Office 365 tenant in the European Union (EU), European Free Trade Association (EFTA), the United Kingdom (UK), United States (US), or Canada (CA), or transfer your data to any data centers in the EU, EFTA, UK, US, or CA. This means that your data may be stored at rest within the EU, EFTA, UK, US, or CA. Our commitment to compliance, privacy, and security remains unchanged while we implement necessary and prudent measures to maintain service availability. We will comply with all applicable laws with respect to data transfers.

Where are the exact addresses of the data centers?

Microsoft does not disclose the exact addresses of its data centers. We established this policy to help secure our data center facilities. However, we do list city locations. Please see Data Center Locations to learn more.

Does the location of your customer data have a direct impact on your end users' experience?

The performance of Office 365 is not simply proportional to a user's distance to data center locations. Microsoft's continued investments in its global cloud network, global cloud infrastructure, and the Office 365 services architecture help provide users with a singular, consistent experience independent of where customer data is stored at rest. If your users are experiencing performance issues, you should troubleshoot those in depth. Microsoft has published guidance for Office 365 customers to plan for and optimize end-user performance on the Office Support web site.

How does Microsoft help me comply with my national, regional, and industry-specific regulations?

To help you comply with national, regional, and industry-specific requirements governing the collection and use of individuals' data, Office 365 offers the most comprehensive set of compliance offerings of any global cloud productivity provider. Please review our compliance offerings and more details in the Office 365 Compliance section on the Microsoft Trust Center. Also, certain Office 365 plans offer further compliance solutions to help you manage your data, comply with legal and regulatory requirements, and monitor actions taken on your data.

Who can access your data and according to what rules?

Microsoft implements strong measures to help protect your customer data from inappropriate access or use by unauthorized persons. This includes restricting access by Microsoft personnel and subcontractors, and carefully defining requirements for responding to government requests for customer data. However, you can access your own customer data at any time and for any reason. More details are available on the Microsoft Trust Center.

Does Microsoft access your data?

Microsoft automates most Office 365 operations while intentionally limiting its own access to customer data. This helps us manage Office 365 at scale and address the risks of internal threats to customer data. By default, Microsoft engineers have no standing administrative privileges and no standing access to customer data in Office 365. A Microsoft engineer may have limited and logged access to customer data for a limited amount of time, but only when necessary for normal service operations and only when approved by a member of senior management at Microsoft (and, for customers who are licensed for the Customer Lockbox feature, by the customer).

How does Microsoft secure your data?

Microsoft has robust policies, controls, and systems built into Office 365 to help keep your information safe. Review the Office 365 security section on the Microsoft Trust Center to learn more.

New Office 365 tenants are defaulted to Geo based on the country of the billing address associated with that tenant's first subscription. To confirm where customer data is stored for existing Office 365 services, please view tenant specific data location information in your Office 365 Admin Center in Settings | Organization profile | Data location card. Alternatively, expand the country that your business is based in, from the list below, to find out where customer data would be stored if you were to start using an Office 365 Service today.